If I manage to outgrow this current madness, the book that I write will open with the last line of Dante's Inferno: "And then we came out to see once more the stars."

It all looks like something out of Dante's Inferno.

Here is the story, in brief. A lonely pilgrim—it is Dante himself—strays into a dark wood, and is guided by the Roman poet Virgil down into Hell to contemplate the harrowing fate of the damned.